Tag: friends

We like Thursdays

Rex and I, we like Thursdays. On Thursdays, Rex goes out to Green Acres with Tim for a play date with Sparky and sometimes Sue and Seig. (I don’t include Greta because the Dowager Doberman doesn’t “play”; she observes. From a distance. With a haughty attitude.)

Then Sparky gets to come back to The Compound with Rex and Tim. Sparky loves the car almost as much as Rex. Lynne comes here when she gets off work, we eat dinner, and we watch Survivor. Thursday is also the only day that Margot likes Rex, because Sparky becomes Disturber of Margot’s Peace No. 1.

As for Guinness, she’s excited about the menu. She never gets anything, but Guinness is a dog of Great Hope, always. Tonight, I’m trying something different. Baking a hen with orange slices and crushed cranberries. I’ve never had cranberries that weren’t jellied or at least drowning in sweetness. Too bad Tim wasn’t holding the camera when I bit into one earlier. “Tart?” he asked. “Who knew,” I replied. “Anyone from New England,” he said.

Today, I’m finishing a short story. Hopefully it, too, will be a little tart as well as a little sweet. We’ll see.

Happy Friday the 13th

Today, I think I’ll stay home and write.

This morning’s coffee cup is brought to us courtesy of Nan and Ron, my friend Steve R’s parents. I think the cup was probably meant to remind me of their beautiful white cat George. Steve always said that George was much more spoiled than Steve and his six siblings. And I’m sure George, like any cat, would say that was as it should have been.

I also included my breakfast as a reminder to Tim that there is still some Lindsey-baked muffinish goodness over here. Thanks, Lindsey!

A Little Twist of Texas

Recently I read Linda Raven Moore’s A LITTLE TWIST OF TEXAS. This is the story of Linda getting on her motorcycle and traveling solo from California to Texas… Well, sort of. As any classic rock singer will tell us, life on the road isn’t easy, and a portion of Linda’s trip was made without the motorcycle, but adaptability is part of the tale.

Because Linda is a gifted storyteller, I was completely drawn into her narrative. I fretted over the idiosyncracies of “Beastie,” the motorcycle who could be really known only from a long trip such as Linda’s. I felt the buffeting of the wind that caused delays along the way. I marveled at the amount of thought and planning that goes into everything: what and how one packs for an extended motorcycle trip. Where and what to eat when you’re crossing miles of uninhabited desert. The pain of unlayering and undressing just to use the bathroom.

Linda’s keen appreciation for the sights and people along the way brings her story to life. Her humor and her willingness to be frank about her vulnerabilities and insecurities make this more than just the story of a road trip. It’s also the interior journey of a woman who can handle bumps and detours as she follows her dream.

I hope there are more trips and books to describe them.

My Own Great Motorcycle Adventure

My first boyfriend was Tim G., and damn if I can remember what kind of motorcycle he had in high school, but I was forbidden to ride it. Oh, the temptation! On frosty ninth-grade mornings, I would stand with my friends on the circle in front of our school, anticipating the engine sound that would herald Tim’s arrival. It was the seventies, so Tim had his Easy Rider helmet, much like this:

And the coolest leather jacket ever, which I wish I had a photo of, but it looked a little like this one, only better:

My heart would race as he drove up. I was totally crazy about that boy. Which of course meant that when he asked me to take a trip on his bike to Cheaha State Park, I ignored my parents’ dire warnings of how much trouble I’d be in if I got on that motorcycle.

It was one of the best days ever. Quite cold as we neared the top of the mountain, but that just meant I hugged Tim even tighter. My instinct was to pull against the motorcycle on curves, but I finally just placed my trust in Tim and did what he told me. It was invigorating to ride through that much physical beauty and feel so close to it all.

There was one thing no one had warned me about, however. When your hair is even longer than this:

you don’t leave it down. Hair doesn’t really cinematically flow in the wind when it’s sticking out from under a helmet. Instead, it gets whipped around so violently that when you get back from your eighty-five-mile round trip, your hair is nothing but snarls and tangles.

Of course, I couldn’t go home looking like that. My parents would have known exactly what I’d been up to. I sat on the living room floor in front of Tim’s mother, one of the truly sweetest ladies I ever knew, and she painstakingly combed out every tangle and tried not to make me cry in the process.

My parents didn’t know until years later about that trip, long after Tim was just a memory. But a good memory, because every awful pull of the comb was worth that glorious day on the back of a motorcycle with my first love.

Another October


John in 1993

Today while taking a nap, I dreamed about my friend John. It was a silly dream, not worth repeating (as if anyone is ever interested in someone else’s dreams anyway), but it did remind me that John would have turned 41 on October 5.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, in October of 1996, Tom, our friend Amy (Rex’s first mom!), and I were in Washington, D.C., volunteering for what would be the last display in its entirety of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. I could write a book about those cold, amazing days in our capital, but I won’t do it here.

A brief history.

On October 11, 1987, the Quilt included 1,920 panels and was displayed for the first time on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The Quilt returned to Washington, D.C. in October of 1988, when 8,288 panels were displayed on the Ellipse in front of the White House. The entire Quilt was again displayed on the National Mall in 1992 and 1996, when it contained approximately 37,440 individual panels.

Five panels that I’d made with the help of my mother and Tom, as well as my friends Amy, Lynne, Lisa, Vicki, Nora, Shawn, and Shelley, were among those 37,440.

After we returned from Washington, John and James were over for a visit. We looked at photos, but John didn’t really want to talk that much about the Quilt. One of my panels was for John’s former boyfriend, Jeff. However John may have grieved the loss of Jeff, he was looking forward to his future with James in that October when he turned 31.

None of us had the slightest inkling that two months later, John would be dead. What had seemed an early diagnosis of Kaposi’s Sarcoma, and the promise of the new protease inhibitors, all happened just a little too late to save him.

I know a lot of people don’t like autumn. The days get shorter. The weather turns cold. The falling leaves remind us of loss and decay. I don’t know why I love this season so much. But overall, I’d rather think of all the friends’ and family’s birthdays I celebrate during autumn, all the good people who’ve been part of my life, and all the ways that dark times are always, always followed by rebirth in the spring, new friendships, renewed hope, and a planet that has so much to teach us if we only pay attention to its cycles.

From the NAMES Project Foundation web site:

Funds Raised by the Quilt for Direct Services for People with AIDS: over $3,250,000 (U.S.)
Number of Visitors to the Quilt: 15,200,000
Number of 12’x12′ Sections of The Quilt: 5,748
Number of Panels in the Quilt: approximately 46,000
Number of Names on the Quilt: More than 83,900 (The names on the Quilt represent approximately 17.5% of all U.S. AIDS deaths.)
Size : 1,293,300 square feet (the equivalent of 275 NCAA basketball courts with walkway, 185 courts without walkway)
Miles of Fabric: 52.25 miles long (if all 3’x6′ panels were laid end to end)
Total Weight: More than 54 tons
NAMES Project Chapters: 20
International Affiliates: 43


Amy, Becky, Tom in 1996